HAMILTON -- Authorities are investigating a possible burial site outside a homeless encampment in the woods near the NJ Transit River Line tracks and Route 129, the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office said yesterday.

While working on an unrelated investigation, county detectives received information yesterday that a makeshift graveyard may be located there, said Casey DeBlasio, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office.

"There are several physical indications that could indicate a burial area or a memorial," DeBlasio said. "At this point it's unclear."

As of late yesterday, there were no indications that a crime had been committed, DeBlasio said. The site has not been excavated yet.

Yesterday afternoon, police and detectives from Hamilton, NJ Transit, Trenton and the state police took over a large swath of woods south of Lalor Street near the tracks, establishing a crime scene.

Authorities said they were given information that graves there were of deceased homeless men, buried by fellow inhabitants of the encampment living on the site of an old factory complex. It was the same area where, in 2007, a homeless man was severely beaten by a teenager armed with a garden hoe handle. The teen was later arrested by police.

Detectives and NJ Transit police searched a narrow corridor below Lalor Street, bound on one side by the tracks and the other side by Hewitt Avenue, which opens onto a large wooded area containing the factory complex and a pond.

The area is just yards from the Trenton-Hamilton border, and close to the NJ Transit right of way.

Neighbors said homeless people moved into the area shortly after the industrial facility on the site closed down decades ago.

Randy Miller, who works for Broadway Moving & Storage near the entrance to the crime scene, said the homeless men who move back and forth near his property are harmless but an annoyance. He couldn't provide an estimate for how many people live in the camp.

"They come and go, they're like gypsies," he said.

Robert Barry, 57, slowly ducked under the padlocked, rusted fence gate that used to be the factory's entrance, padding his way on his hands and knees in the small space. Barry says a tent in the camp is one of the places he frequently stays, but that he had never heard of any burials.